


and a day

by apathetic_revenant



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: A coda, Free Will, Gen, Grief, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, all that jazz, discussions about time travel, late night comfort tea with friends, post-City on the Edge of Forever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-05 16:17:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11581674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apathetic_revenant/pseuds/apathetic_revenant
Summary: The aftermath of The City on the Edge of Forever, in three parts.





	1. Spock and McCoy

**Author's Note:**

> the low-continuity nature of TOS resulted in a lot of episodes begging for more closure than they ever got, but none of them more so than this one. this has always bothered me (and quite a few other people, I'm sure). 
> 
> I wrote this in my head to get through the stress of college graduation proceedings, and then had to go and actually write it afterwards to get it out of my head again. it was the first full fanfic I ever wrote. at the time I expected it to be the last.
> 
> hoo boy.

_And McCoy...is the random element._

_In his condition, what does he do? Does he kill her?_

_Or perhaps he prevents her from being killed. We don't know which._

 

It was three days after New York.

Per Spock's quiet recommendation and a touch of string-pulling here and there, the _Enterprise_ was now headed towards a spell of planet-side shore leave, while a specialized science vessel came to investigate the Guardian more thoroughly under some strict cautions. Rather extreme, some might say, to request shore leave because of an incident which only significantly involved three out of four hundred crewmen. But when one of those involved was the captain, and he wore the effects of it with painful clarity despite his best efforts to carry on, then in a sense the whole crew _was_ affected.

Three people knew exactly what had happened beyond the time portal. Seven had stood on the surface of a cold, barren planet and looked up at the sky to find themselves suddenly abandoned by their own history. The rest had been aware only of a few scraps of the story: a sudden dramatic scene witnessed on the bridge, a security alert overheard, a request for information from a grim-faced captain, a sharp blow to the ribs followed by a fleeting half-conscious glance of a blue-shirted figure making for the transporter pad. Little else. But word spread, and rumors flourished, and in any case the crew caught their mood from the captain. Kirk did his best to pretend nothing was wrong, doing all his normal duties, smiling tiredly when an ensign handed him a pad to be signed or Sulu quietly requested a course, but his usual drive and animation and sheer energetic love for the job were all too obviously absent. The effects rippled outward, and before long the whole ship was unsettled without knowing exactly why. Some of the rumors grew ugly or anxious; Ensign Davids went so far as to perform an over-the-top mockery of McCoy's frantic escape from the bridge to scattered laughs but far more cold glares from the mess hall, a choice he in any case regretted very much when the first officer found him.

The captain needed time to recover; the crew needed time to forget the incident and to find other things to talk about. That much Spock could arrange; otherwise, he was forced to admit that this was one problem that lay rather far outside his area of expertise. His attempts to reason the captain out of blaming himself fell flat, and even Vulcans recognized the futility of logic in the face of grief; ordinarily he might have steeled himself and gone to McCoy for aid in such a matter, but in this case that hardly seemed wise.

So he occupied himself with shouldering the captain's duties as much as possible and keeping him company over quiet chess games during their off shifts. He spent any remaining time writing reports or engrossed in research. It had begun as an attempt to discern more about the Guardian and its strange capabilities, but as his efforts were frustrated again and again he found himself increasingly focused on the historical era he and Kirk had so abruptly found themselves in. The sociopolitical events that had led up to it, and those that had developed from it, the changing social mores, technological advances of the time, the customs, clothing, vehicles, entertainment, answers to a thousand questions that had arisen during his time there, all of which had been placed neatly to one side to better focus on the task at hand. As he pored over the details of the ensuing war he sometimes idly theorized as to where, in some phantom history that was now nothing more than a snatch of memory, Edith Keeler's presence would have been felt.

Three days in; they would reach their destination sometime tomorrow, if all went as scheduled. He had left his shift and was musing over the writings of Niels Bohr on the way back to his quarters when Nurse Chapel stopped him in the corridor.

“Please, Mr. Spock,” she said, very nearly running to catch up to him, “I need to talk to you.”

He drew up and turned to face her with a mild blink of surprise. Though he knew Chapel to be professional, competent at her job and presumably not usually socially impaired, around him she was usually somewhat shy. He knew she had feelings for him which he could hardly reciprocate, though he did his best not to cause her undue pain-and not only because of the time McCoy had given him a rather extended and vivid threat involving every medical exam for the rest of his service career “if you make Christine cry, I swear to God”.

At the moment, however, Nurse Chapel did not seem the least bit shy. She seemed like a woman on a mission.

“Certainly, Nurse,” he said, curious as to what could have affected the change in her demeanor. “What can I assist you with?”

“Dr. McCoy,” she said.

This time, Spock allowed an entire eyebrow to go up in surprise.

Chapel seemed to chew on her words for a moment. “I...don't really understand what happened, when he went down to the planet,” she began.

Ah. “If that is the information you desire, Nurse, I am afraid I cannot give it to you,” he said. “The matter is confidential.”

“No, that's not what I mean,” she said impatiently. “I mean he needs help, and I don't know how to give it to him when I don't even know what he went through. He won't talk to me, but he might talk to someone who was there.”

Spock frowned. “What kind of assistance does Dr. McCoy require?”

“I don't _know!_ ” Chapel exclaimed, throwing her hands in the air. “I don't know, I don't know what to do with him, I just know he's not... _well_ , since he came back. He's not sleeping, he barely eats, he snaps at me...and, Mr. Spock,” she added, in response to the silent comment forming on Spock's face, “Leonard...Dr. McCoy might grouse and complain and yell, but he doesn't _snap_. Not like this.”

“I see,” Spock said, although he wasn't entirely sure that was a truthful claim. This seemed to be one of those facets of human behavior he had never quite been able to get a grasp on. In his experience, Dr. McCoy snapped at everything all the time. “And you would like to me correct this harassment?”

She glared at him. Christine Chapel actually glared at him. Spock almost took a step back. “I did not come to complain to you because my feelings were hurt, if that's what you're trying to say,” she said coldly. “Someone I care about needs help. Someone I rather thought you cared about too. That's all.”

Spock had to revise his assessment of the situation. Her description didn't sound especially different from McCoy's usual habits to him, but such a dramatic change in the nurse's usual behavior patterns was unlikely to have been prompted except by something she perceived as significant. And she really was glaring at him quite fiercely. “Perhaps I spoke hastily. My apologies. I will speak to Dr. McCoy, if you think it would help the situation.”

Chapel broke into a relieved smile. “I really think it would.”

“Very well.” Spock turned back toward the turbolift. “Is he in Sickbay now?”

“Oh-yes, yes he is,” she said, hastening after him. “He's barely left the past few days.”

Spock considered the problem as they made their way to Sickbay. He had not given McCoy a great deal of thought lately, being preoccupied with the immediate concerns of the captain, the restless crew, and Starfleet's anxious probing into their discoveries. The doctor had conducted his own examination upon their return and given himself treatment to help remove the remaining cordrazine from his system. He had told them that he remembered almost nothing between accidentally injecting himself and waking up in Edith Keeler's back room, and apologized for causing so much trouble.

Kirk had smiled tightly. “Well, never mind, doctor. At least now you have some fantastic material for a paper.”

“Oh, yes,” McCoy replied archly. “Treatment of cordrazine overdose in the early 20th century-I could write the most useless paper in the history of humankind.”

And that had, more or less, been that. Spock had not seen the doctor since, but he had not thought much about it; one rare point of common ground he shared with McCoy was a tendency for them both to get absorbed in their work and forget the passage of time. Despite the doctor's sarcasm, he did have considerable new medical knowledge to document, and Spock had presumed him to be thus preoccupied.

Perhaps it was nothing more than an extended research spree that had worried Chapel...except this would hardly be the first time for such a thing. Anyone working closely with McCoy should be used to it by now. Yet he could not think what else would be bothering the doctor. McCoy's strange moods had always been a mystery to him.

“He'll be in his office,” Chapel said when they reached Sickbay, and with a brief, worried smile she hurried off, leaving Spock to approach McCoy's office in privacy. He pressed the door alarm and, after a long moment, received a tired “C'mon in” in response.

The office was dimly lit, more so than was usually McCoy's wont. The doctor was slumped in his chair with his chin on one hand, staring at the terminal on his desk. Spock took in the unusual amount of clutter spilling across the desk and the cluster of coffee mugs which represented-he did a brief calculation-a considerably higher rate of caffeine consumption than was healthy for the average adult human.

McCoy glanced up at him briefly. “Oh. Spock.”

With increasing concern Spock scanned the office and was relieved to at least find no apparent presence of opened alcohol, although it did look as though a few things had been thrown around the room. In the light from the doorway the doctor looked pale and drawn, with moist shadows under his eyes. The stylus he was toying with in his free hand quivered slightly. When Spock did not speak for a long moment, he glanced up again and growled, “Can I _help_ you with something?”

Spock raised an eyebrow. “Nurse Chapel expressed some concern to me regarding your health.”

McCoy's bloodshot eyes widened and he half rose, slamming the stylus onto the desk. “ _CHRISTINE!”_

“I'm not apologizing!” Chapel called from the other room. “You need help and you know it!”

“I do _not_ need help!” McCoy snarled. To Spock he said, “I'm sorry she bothered you-”

“I rather find myself agreeing with her.”

“So you're a doctor now, huh?” McCoy dropped back into his chair and glowered in Spock's general direction. His Southern drawl had thickened rather noticeably, something Spock had previously noticed occurring when the doctor was especially fatigued. Or intoxicated.

“I defer that noble calling to you,” Spock said gravely. “But for some cases I believe basic sense may suffice. Doctor, when was the last time you slept?”

“What's it to you?” McCoy said, still sounding betrayed by Spock's foray into the medical field. “Why should you care how much I sleep?”

That one warranted both eyebrows. “Of course it is my concern if the chief medical officer is too ill to perform his duties efficiently,” Spock said. “It hardly bodes well for the rest of the ship.”

“Oh, so it's my _efficiency_ you're worried about.” He made that sound like a bad thing. Honestly, dealing with the doctor could be so incomprehensible sometimes. “Well, I'm performing my duties just as fine as ever, so you can clear off, Spock.”

Rather than lower himself to counter such an obvious falsehood, Spock stepped forward and examined one of the mugs. As he had suspected it contained coffee residue, but-he sniffed it cautiously-he could detect no lingering traces of ethanol. He placed it back down carefully. “I understand that you have a predilection toward this...substance...but consuming so much of it so soon after an overdose of a strong stimulant hardly seems wise.”

He was treading on dangerous ground here. Even Spock was wary of coming between McCoy and his coffee. But he had an advantage, which was clear in the half-hearted glare he received: the doctor knew Spock was _right_.

Spock waited patiently. McCoy looked away, fidgeted with his stylus, shoved the mugs into a new arrangement. Eventually he muttered, “Can't sleep anyhow.”

One eyebrow. “I was under the impression the cordrazine-”

“Oh, yeah, it's just about gone.” McCoy began tapping one of the mugs with the stylus. _Clink. Clink. Clink._ “The horror of the medical community and it turns out it can be all but cured by a stay in a 1930s soup kitchen. Who'd've thought? Maybe I can patent the cure...”

Spock prompted him with a look.

 _Clink_. “Thing about cordrazine is, it gives the body a good kick. Makes everything work a little harder.” _Clink._ “Part of why it's so dangerous. Workin' harder might be a good thing when a man's unconscious and his heart's beating a bit lazy. Not so good when you're where you should be and everything starts working harder than it _should_.” _Clink_. “That's why you gotta be careful with how much you give, cause it likes to stick around and keep doing its thing even when the situation doesn't call for it anymore.” _Clink_. “And once the body gets used to workin' overtime, sometimes it keeps doing that even when the drug's gone.”

 _Clink_.

“Doctor,” Spock said slowly, watching McCoy's hand shake around the stylus. “You falsified your report to the captain and I-”

“I did no such thing,” McCoy protested. “I told you the drug was mostly gone, and it is. Anyway, Mr. Spock, you can't blame me for not making you aware of all the side effects when even _I_ don't know 'em. No one does. We don't have a precedent for this.” He managed to produce a lopsided grin. “I'm a medical marvel.”

“There are case studies of cordrazine overdoses,” Spock said. He thought back to the information he had called up during the initial crisis. At the time, they had been mostly concerned with the more immediate effects, but he could recall some information about the later developments.

“Oh, yeah, sure,” McCoy said. “But no one's ever been stupid enough to put an entire hypo of it in his guts.”

Spock had to take a moment to figure that one out. He hadn't seen the exact moment, being more concerned with observing the Guardian's time distortions, but he was fairly sure the doctor's overdose had not been prompted by any reasoned decision.

“Unless I am gravely mistaken, what happened was an accident,” he said. “Hardly a matter of intelligence.”

“Damn amateur accident,” McCoy said. “If I pulled a stunt like that in the Academy I'd be a laughingstock for the rest of my days.”

Spock thought of the captain's startled cry and the flurry of activity as hands from all over the bridge came forward to catch the doctor as he stumbled back. He recalled no laughter. “Doctor, as you yourself have so frequently complained, space travel is dangerous. We were experiencing extreme turbulence. It is no more logical to blame yourself for being injured by it than it would be to blame Mr. Sulu for being injured by his console.” McCoy didn't seem convinced. He tried another tack. “I can assure you that at no point during our time in the past did the captain express any resentment or blame toward you. Only concern. As did I.”

 _Clink. Clink_. “If it wasn't for me you would never have been there in the first place. Jumpin' in that damn thing...and you know, the hell of it is, if I'd been sober, you wouldn't have gotten me in a thing like that with a cattle prod.”

In fact that irony had occurred to Spock, although he would not have thought to express it in precisely that way. “Doctor...”

 _Clinkclinkclinkclink._ “You think I didn't see the look on Jim's face when she...when she was hit? The way he looked afterward? That was me. And I had the nerve to blame him for it. To ask him if he knew what he had done.”

“You could not have known.”

“I might have hurt him if you hadn't said something, Spock. When he stopped me...I thought it was part of the trick. The hallucination. Because Jim...Jim wouldn't do something like that.”

Spock was thrown. “I was not aware that you were hallucinating at the time-”

“I wasn't. But I thought I was. Spock, I woke up alone in 1930, I didn't know how I got there. I'd been out of my mind on cordrazine, I was still shaking...some kind of delusion was the only reasonable explanation I could think of.”

A surprisingly logical conclusion given the available evidence, Spock had to admit. A pity that logic seemed to have fallen off somewhat since the doctor's return. “Regardless of what you might have done, doctor, you did not do it. It would be illogical to blame-”

_“DAMN YOUR LOGIC!”_

The stylus clattered off the far wall.

Spock stared at McCoy as the doctor buried his head in his hands. Their discussions had often turned heated-more often than not, truthfully-but the doctor had never screamed at him, or thrown anything.

He was beginning to think this particular problem might be beyond him.

Yet there was no one else to address it. As Nurse Chapel had pointed out, only he, McCoy and Kirk knew what had occurred beyond the portal. The captain was deep in his own struggles and unlikely to be able to objectively address the situation with his usual ingenuity. Even if secondhand knowledge would suffice-which in this case, he rather doubted-he knew neither he nor Kirk were inclined to divulge the details. He very much doubted the doctor was either.

He steepled his hands before him and considered the data. McCoy seemed determined to blame himself for the entire incident, which was highly irrational. Of course, 'highly irrational' was hardly unusual for the doctor, and past experience indicated a low probability of convincing him away from such positions, but...

He had witnessed two previous occasions on which McCoy had been severely incapacitated mentally: when he had been taken under control by the computer which called itself Landru, and when they had both been affected by the spores on Omicron Ceti III. In those instances as well the doctor had later illogically apologized for actions beyond his control, but without anything like as extreme a reaction as this. In fact he had personally spoken to McCoy after both events. In the first case the doctor's feelings had been of violation; in the latter case he had mostly seemed annoyed. He had not expressed such a severe reaction in either instance.

So there was some other contributing factor. Spock considered variables. First and foremost of course was the cordrazine, which clearly was still having some kind of impact. It was tempting to attribute the doctor's distress entirely to the potent effects of the drug, but he would be a poor scientist to not consider all possible angles.

Consequences. Previously whatever the doctor had done had had little impact on the mission or caused any notable harm to any of the crew. In that regard the situations were not comparable. Initiation. McCoy seemed to see a difference between the events being caused by the outside forces of artificial intelligence or native flora and being caused in some sense by his own hand, even if only in the most literal possible interpretation.

Was that all?

Spock considered McCoy's reactions as he had been informed of what had happened. Confusion. Embarrassment. Shock. Sympathy. Horror...

He did not have all the data.

Carefully, quietly, he removed a couple of books and a uniform shirt from the office's other chair, moved it over to the side of the desk, and sat down. McCoy did not look up.

“Doctor,” Spock said softly. “Is there something else bothering you?”

The doctor did not reply for so long that Spock began to think he had not heard, or else was deliberately ignoring him. But at last McCoy lifted his head and began to slowly twist his hands together. Some of the tense artificial energy seemed to have gone out of him. He looked extremely tired.

“ _Primum non nocere,_ ” he said.

Spock raised an eyebrow. “First, do no harm?”

“Mm.” McCoy leaned back in his chair. “People think it's in the Hippocratic Oath, but it isn't, not specifically. You could call it a summary of the Oath, if you like. What it's all about, when you get down to it. Funny thing is, no one really knows where the phrase comes from. We just all sort of...know it.” His fingers locked and unlocked like an intricate puzzle. “One thing the Oath _does_ say is, 'Above all, I must not play at God.'”

Spock frowned. “If you are referring to the captain's decision, the alternative was demonstrably more destructive-”

“No, Mr. Spock, that's not what I mean.” He sighed and stared out into space. “I took an oath...I don't know if that means anything to you, but it means quite a bit to me.”

“I would consider the modern Hippocratic Oath to be a highly respectable and well written code,” Spock said. “And as far as I am aware, you have violated none of its tenets, if that is what concerns you-”

“No, that's not quite what I mean either. I mean...”

Spock waited.

“I'm in the business of preserving life. That's what I swore to. That's what I do. I wouldn't ask you to follow my oath, Spock, you or Jim, I know you've got different roles. I hate what you have to do sometimes, but I know if you didn't do it there'd be a lot more pain and death out there. But this is what I _am_.” He looked down at his hands. “Except now you're tellin' me that by doing that, by saving a life...I wiped out a whole future. _Our_ future.” He drew a deep, shaking breath and looked at Spock with a bitter smile. “You can see how that might make a man question himself.”

For a long moment Spock could think of nothing to say at all.

“I mean,” McCoy said into the silence, “I don't make calls, who's worthy to save and who's not. I don't _play at God_. You start going down that road, you don't tend to come back up it...but if _anyone_ was worthy, Spock...! She was good, and kind, and innocent, and I saved her, and just because she was in the wrong place, the wrong time...”

He ran a hand through his already disordered hair. “What if the next person on my table is _meant_ to die? I never believed in that! Fate, and destiny, and what's meant to happen and what's not...you do what's _right_ in the moment, that's all you can be sure of. Except now I...I can't be sure even of that.”

“Such thinking is highly unsustainable,” Spock pointed out. “It is impossible to predict the potential effects of every possible action. If you had risen to replace your hypospray a few seconds later-”

McCoy flinched, and Spock realized his error. “Or, if Mr. Sulu had been leaning slightly farther back when his console shorted out,” he added quickly. “If a minor delay had caused the ship to enter turbulence a few moments later, or earlier-Doctor, if you attempt to plot the entire course of everything you do, you will never do anything at all.”

“I know that. In theory, I know that.” McCoy shook his head. “But it's one thing to know that and another to get told pointblank that you're to blame for the death of...God, of _billions_...just because of one thing, one decision...because you were doing what you thought was your job in this life.”

They had both assumed that the change in the timeline had come about because of McCoy's madness: some wild, confused act, maybe nothing more than pushing someone aside at precisely the wrong moment. Except in the end his condition had had nothing to do with it. It had not been a random act but an intentional one. Until now Spock had not considered the distinction worth noting; the effects, after all, had been the same.

Maybe it was instinct, spur-of-the-moment, barely intentional at all: a shout to get clear, or a shove out of the way. Or maybe he had knelt in the street, sick and stranded but a doctor to the last, and had worked to save her life.

They would never know.

“Respectfully, Dr. McCoy,” Spock said, “I must disagree.”

McCoy blinked at him. “Disagree with _what?_ You said-”

“It is true that the life or death of Edith Keeler formed a focal point in time,” Spock said. “This much we found to be true, within our limited knowledge of the complexities of causality. And it is true that alteration of that focal point-in this case by you, but potentially by anybody-drastically affected the ensuing events. These are the facts as we know them, and as far as I am aware they cannot be disputed.”

McCoy gave him a _do you really think you're helping_ look.

“However,” Spock went on, ignoring this, “If we are speaking in terms of _blame_ , then I submit that you place far too much of it on yourself and spare too little for anyone else. Every person in the timeline that ensued made their own decisions. Many of them chose, for whatever reason, to cause harm to others. You were not responsible for those decisions. You are not responsible for their outcomes.”

McCoy shifted in his seat. “Yes, but most of those decisions were the same in both timelines. The deciding factor was a choice towards _peace-_ ”

“Doctor, if you wish to debate the merits of the philosophy of pacifism, I am afraid we will be here for a very long time,” Spock said. “Although I might make the comment that, having seen you at your work, _peace_ and _the_ _preservation of life_ are not necessarily synonymous.”

Even in his present mood, McCoy had to laugh a little at that one. “Yes, but still-”

“Again you are placing another man's decision upon your shoulders. Throughout history there have been many instances where a choice towards peace had violent consequences. We may debate the merits of each and every one of them, if you wish, though eventually I shall have to return to my next shift-but you had no more to do with any given one of them than you had to do with this one. You did not make the decision. You merely enabled it to be made-as you do every time you work to preserve life. For after all, without life there can _be_ no choices.

You are thinking that perhaps what happened in that timeline happened because you value life. But I put it to you that it happened because _others did not_. Such is an unfortunate truth of the universe which we are forced to contend with, and sometimes we must make hard choices because of it. But that does not mean you are wrong to value it, and to act according to that value. You yourself have said: I must not play at God. You cannot, you _did not_ force the lives of others to go down the right path or the wrong one. You can only allow them to live.”

McCoy was silent. His shoulders shook.

“We disagree on many things, Doctor,” Spock said. “But I would find it to be a great and terrible shame if you allowed your passion for what you know is right to be swayed by these events.”

There was quiet for a while. Noises drifted in from Sickbay: the beeping of a monitor, Nurse Chapel speaking to a patient. Finally McCoy looked up.

“Thank you,” he said, hoarse and very quiet.

Spock looked at him archly. “For what?”

McCoy smiled slightly and toyed with the braid on his sleeves. Then he yawned so hard his teeth clacked.

“Regarding the medical arts,” Spock said gently, “I lack your esteemed prowess in that area and I am unfamiliar with the most effective treatment for cordrazine overdose. But I rather suspect that this-” he gestured at the assembled mugs and overused desk “-is not it.”

“No, probably not,” McCoy admitted. “But it's better than sleepin', at the moment. Third or fourth time I woke up with my heart going a mile a minute it started feeling a bit pointless to keep tryin'.”

“Well,” Spock said, “I believe there is a human idiom applicable to the situation. 'If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.'”

McCoy looked him in utter shock, then began to laugh. He kept going and going, falling back in his chair with one hand weakly smacking the desk, until Spock began to grow concerned. He was about to call for Nurse Chapel when, with surprising prescience, she stuck her head in the door.

“What-” She stared at McCoy for a moment in total confusion, then shook her head and smiled. “Feeling better, are we?”

McCoy wiped his eyes, still snickering. “Well, if I'm not, at least I lived long enough to hear Spock say-say-” He broke out laughing again.

Deciding his usefulness in this situation had come to an end, Spock rose from his chair and tucked it neatly back under the desk. “Nurse, if I may make a suggestion, I believe the good doctor would benefit from some sleep.”

“Finally someone agrees with me.” Chapel crossed the room and gently but firmly drew McCoy out of his chair. “Come on, Len. You're overdue for a nap.”

“'M alright,” McCoy muttered as Chapel half led, half pushed him out of the room, but his protests were undercut by another yawn.

“Uh huh,” Chapel said. “And I'm the Surgeon General.”

McCoy caught the doorframe as they left, ignoring Chapel's attempts to move him through it, and looked back. “Spock. Do me one more favor?”

“Of course, Doctor.”

“Something I've been wondering...perhaps you can apply your, uh, analytical talent towards it.”

Spock carefully logged that rare comment for future reference.

“If I've got this whole thing right...when things went, went _wrong_ , that was a timeline where you never went through the gate. So I never got back.”

Chapel stopped attempting to pry McCoy's fingers off the doorframe, looking curious and slightly abashed. Spock hesitated, but evidently McCoy felt more or less comfortable discussing the matter in front of her. Either that, or he was too sleep-deprived to notice. “Correct, Doctor. In the altered timeline which we traveled back to prevent, you would never have returned to the present. Evidently the Guardian only brings its travelers back when time has been 'fixed', although the mechanisms for this...”

McCoy waved that aside. “Never mind the mechanisms. I just...what do you think happened to me, Spock? Stranded in the 20th century for the rest of my days? I keep trying to think what I would do, what I _did_ , I suppose, but...”

Spock considered the problem. It was an interesting one. “It is impossible to say with any certainty. We do not even know exactly what you did to effect the change. It is entirely possible you may have been hit by the car instead of Ms. Keeler, in which case your involvement in that timeline would of course have ended very quickly.”

“I might prefer that,” McCoy muttered.

“Aside from that possibility...Doctor, the only conclusion I can draw with any higher probability than not is that you would have found a way to carry on fulfilling your oath. Healing, that is to say, as much as you possibly could. And no doubt complaining a great deal along the way.”

McCoy laughed. “Yeah. I could live with that. Alright, alright, Chris, I'm coming.”

Spock listened to them leave Sickbay, McCoy still arguing faintly, then carefully gathered up the mugs and took them to the dish drop on his way out.

 


	2. Spock and Kirk

_Jim...you deliberately stopped me...do you know what you just did?_

_He knows, Doctor. He knows._

Jim Kirk was a habitual reader and walker. It was something he had been teased for often enough back at the Academy, especially when he showed up with another bruise or scratch from having stumbled into a bush or the side of a building while engrossed in a passage. At first he would grin sheepishly and hand out muttered “I don't know”s to people asking why he did it. In time he grew so familiar with the grounds that he could walk all over without raising his eyes from the page and never miss a step, and the sight of Kirk wandering around with his book at odd hours became so commonplace that his classmates eventually stopped noticing at all.

Some books he could read from the comfort of a chair (or his bed, or the shuttles that zipped students across the far reaches of the Academy, or the pile of laundry taking up half his dorm room, circumstances depending), but the truth was that sometimes, when the action began to get especially gripping, or tensions were running high, or the author was describing some new and exotic locale, he would be seized with the urge to get up and _go_ somewhere. He wanted to _move_ , to cover new ground, as if reading had suddenly cut to the quick of that deep urge to adventure and explore that sometimes became so buried under the toil of Academy life that he almost forgot why he was there in the first place. Wandering across the quad or down dorm hallways might be a far cry from charting the deeps of space, but as the only option available it worked surprisingly well.

Once he actually got _out there_ , of course, things were different. Just to be on a starship, however still one's feet may be, was to be going, exploring, _doing_. He could feel that, no matter how menial the job or how low the position, and if his wanderlust was never quite sated, at least books no longer drove him to distraction. But he found that the old habit had a new benefit, for if he no longer needed to wander just to move his feet, he found he wanted to wander to better know his ship. From his very first assignment he wanted to be as well acquainted as possible with the vessels carrying him through the dark. He would walk everywhere he was allowed to go, through well-lit rec rooms and rare dark corridors, running his fingers along the walls as he turned the pages, letting the knowledge of the place seep into him as his knowledge of the Academy had. With new territory to stumble through, and new faces around him, the teasing began all anew; but on the other hand his habit sometimes proved useful, as when he was able to find his way by memory through a blocked-off deck shaken and plunged into darkness by a clip from a fleeing Orion vessel, and rescued three crewmen before the emergency crews were able to get through.

As captain, of course, no one teased him (well... _almost_ no one), and if the crew were surprised to find him wandering through the decks on his off-shift with a paperback in one hand, there were after all much worse idiosyncrasies for a captain to have, and they quickly got used to it. If he had wanted to know his previous ships, it was nothing compared to his desire to know the _Enterprise_. He delighted in every deck, every lift, every bend of a corridor, and he came to know crewmen he might hardly ever have seen otherwise. With a conversation starter ready in his hand, the crew opened up more than they might have. He received exhaustive and enthusiastic coverage of the current academic debates about certain xenoflora from the botany department, discussed the comparative merits of Lewis and Tolkien with the laundry staff, and once had a gleeful half-hour discussion with a security officer who was just as thrilled as the captain to find someone who shared his love for Horatio Hornblower.

There were no passionate conversations lately. There was, in truth, very little reading. He would stare at the same passage for minutes at a time without taking in a word, if he looked at the book at all. Mostly he walked, one hand on whatever wall or furniture or machinery was nearby, feeling every panel, every button, every doorframe or railing, assuring himself that it was all still there.

It had all been gone.

He had looked up into the blackness reaching over the interminably old ruins, and known...of course he could not see the _Enterprise_ from the planet, could not detect its absence, but he had _known_. It had all blinked out in a moment, every ounce of metal, every breath of air, every crewman working and living and being aboard it, all gone in the space of a heartbeat. Wiped away as easily as a car speeding down a street undeterred.

Sometimes he woke in the night and could not sleep until he knew it was all still there, all restored to the way it should be, all _right_. Foolish, he knew. Illogical, as Spock would say, for of course if the _Enterprise_ disappeared again, he would go with it, unknowing. But he still felt the need to feel the pulse of the ship, see the familiar faces of his crew, and know that the world was true again.

He had long ago faced and accepted the fact that the responsibility for this ship rested on his shoulders. They sailed a dangerous expanse, and a wrong move-or even a _right_ move, at a time when there was simply no possible victory to be had-could mean the end of it all, the total destruction of the ship and the snuffing out of every life aboard. A heady burden, but one any starship captain had to look in the eye and accept if they were to do their job the way it was meant to be done. But it was one thing to accept death and another to accept never having existed at all. They might all be killed by Klingons tomorrow, but at least they would have _lived_ first. All their past trials and successes, all their discoveries, all their glories would still exist, and the universe would hold them in its memory. Upon that surety he had built the courage to stare countless dangers in the face and see them blink first.

And the worst thing was to know that he had almost not done it.

A moment's more hesitation at the side of the road and the bright trail of history would have unraveled at his fingertips.

She had realized, before she died. He wished desperately that she had not, or that at the very least he had not seen it on her face, but she had and he could not have looked away. For the barest moment as the car struck her and he stood by and watched, holding back the struggling doctor, she knew that he had chosen not to save her.

He had seen no accusation, no blame. Only confusion. _Why?_

 _This is why_ , he thought, as he ran a hand over an idol given to him by the captain of a trading ship he had saved during his first command. _This is why_ , he thought as he saw crewmen of different species laughing and talking together in the mess. _This is why_ , he thought when he saw the stars wheeling away on the viewscreen before him.

_This is why, this is why, this is why...I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, this is why._

For the first time in years he stumbled on his rounds, and a hand caught him.

He blinked and looked up, shaking away the printed words that had been burning into his eyes without his understanding a one of them. Spock was standing in front of him. If Kirk did not know his first officer as well as he did, he would never have been able to interpret the look on his face as one of concern.

He tried to laugh it off. “Beg your pardon, Mr. Spock, I was, uh...a little distracted.”

“Indeed.” Spock's voice was perfectly neutral, but that damn look didn't go away.

Kirk closed the book with a finger in it to mark his place and tried to think of something to say. “Were you, uh, were you looking for me?”

Spock folded his hands behind his back and fell into step beside Kirk. “Actually, Captain, I was returning from Sickbay.”

“Sickbay?” Kirk almost dropped his book. Spock generally stayed as far away from Sickbay as he could unless there was some utterly pressing need. “Is everything alright? Are you-”

“I am quite well,” Spock cut in smoothly. “I was merely speaking to Doctor McCoy.”

That sounded even _less_ likely. Spock and McCoy did not “merely speak” to one another. Oh, if there was a matter of great enough severity they would put aside the bickering long enough to deal with it, but it had to be truly dire-he had seen them snipe their way through mortal peril.. And he would know if anything that bad was going on aboard his ship.

Wouldn't he?

He put a firm hand on the horrible possibilities rapidly spiraling out of control in his imagination and said, as casually as possible, “Oh? What about?”

Spock did not immediately answer, which did nothing for Kirk's rising sense of unease. Finally he said, “Have you spoken to the doctor recently?”

Kirk blinked. “No, not since we...not since we, uh, got back, really. He seemed alright.” Actually...come to think of it, he hadn't even _seen_ McCoy for the past three days. Not at dinner, not on the bridge making wry comments, not anywhere he was used to the doctor being. He had been too wrapped up in his own thoughts to really notice, but in retrospect...

“I think he must be avoiding me,” he told Spock. “I haven't seen him around at all...usually Chapel will at least chase him out to eat. But, I wouldn't blame him if he were still feeling a bit resentful.” He laughed, a sound with no humor in it whatsoever. “Lord knows I am.”

Spock was giving him an odd look. He was getting pretty good at understanding Spock's looks, but he couldn't figure this one out. “What? What is it?”

“If I may make a suggestion,” Spock said, speaking in that too-careful way that instantly told Kirk that there were details not being divulged, “I would recommend that you do speak with him. I believe it may benefit you both.”

 _Ah_. He thought he was getting a grip on this now. One area where he had known Spock and McCoy to collaborate-the only area, actually, except for the occasional rare disease-was his own wellbeing. If one or the other was worried for Kirk, they could join forces all too effectively. It was damned annoying; he might be able to shake off Spock or McCoy, but not both of them together. They complemented each other too well, though they'd both be thoroughly scandalized if he ever told them that.

Except what was this “benefit you both” business? Most likely Spock's way of tactfully suggesting that it was high time the captain and the CMO got over it and started talking to one another again. He would never be so crass as to make such a comment upfront. Kirk wondered if it would do any good to point out that he hadn't been avoiding McCoy, McCoy had been avoiding _him-_ but as soon as the thought formed he realized how ridiculously petulant it sounded, so much so that he had to smile a little, his first genuine amusement in days.

He had thought to leave the doctor alone for a little while, to let him deal with things on his own time-McCoy had said he had understood the situation once it was explained to him, he had apologized-but Kirk still remembered the sound of his voice as they stood by the side of the road while Edith Keeler bled out. Low and cold and tightly restrained, a far cry from McCoy's usual hot-tempered bluster and invective. Rationally accepting a situation and emotionally accepting it were, to his first officer's endless dismay, two entirely different things.

Just as _he_ might, rationally and logically, bear no ill will toward McCoy for the incident, but still found it difficult to look him in the eye.

Spock was looking at him. Kirk forced a casual smile. “Alright, Spock, if you say so. I'll drop in on him sometime soon.” He half-faked a yawn, catching another odd look from Spock in the process. _No_ idea what that one was about. “For now, though, I think I'm going to head back to my quarters.”

“Very well, Captain,” Spock said, continuing to walk beside him. Kirk wondered if Spock was escorting him in some fashion or simply walking back to his own quarters. Or, with custom Vulcan efficiency, both.

He shifted the book around to a more comfortable position and Spock, glancing down, caught a glimpse of the cover. He raised an eyebrow. Over time Kirk had come to understand that Spock's eyebrow-raising was a complex language in and of itself; this particular phrase translated as _I'm not going to comment,_ _but..._

“An indulgence,” Kirk said, smiling more genuinely now at Spock's polite bemusement. “Some late twentieth century speculative fiction...”

“Regarding...time, Captain?”

“Yes...” Kirk fanned through the pages-losing his place in the process, but it wasn't as if he hadn't read this one enough times to have it all but memorized anyway. “I don't know how it was on Vulcan, but we spent a remarkable amount of time theorizing about time travel well before we had the faintest inkling it was possible. We had a great many different ideas as to how it might work, or what the possible...implications might be.”

“Speculative fiction is rather less plentiful among Vulcans than humans,” Spock said. Kirk noted with some delight that he had not said there was _no_ Vulcan speculative fiction, and made a note to ask him for some recommendations. “But we, as well, considered the possibilities of travel through time extensively. Debates over the matter are still ongoing, in fact.”

“Mmm...” They had reached the turbolift. Kirk rocked on his heels as they waited for one to arrive; Spock, of course, stood perfectly still. “It's funny, really...no matter how many times you imagine something, plan it out in your head, it never quite turns out how you expected...”

Spock's confusion about such a pointlessly obvious statement was almost palpable. He managed a noncommital, “Indeed.”

The lift arrived. They stepped into it and Kirk gave it their destination. For a moment they stood in companionable silence.

Kirk hadn't really meant to start a conversation-he had, in fact, rather badly desired some solitude-but he found himself carrying on somehow anyway. “Did I ever tell you about my Kobayashi Maru test, Spock?”

Spock blinked. “I do not believe so.”

“It caused a bit of a stir at the time,” Kirk said, a little ruefully. He still, even now, had some vague sense of academic anxiety that consequences for what he had done might someday abruptly catch up to him. Which did not mean he regretted doing it, as such.

“I took it normally the first time,” he explained. “But I guess I didn't learn whatever lesson I was supposed to. So I asked to take it again.”

Spock's eyebrows contracted. “Given the nature of the Kobayashi Maru test, once one is aware there is no possible 'win' condition, there can be no gain whatsoever in re-attempting it-”

“That's exactly what my proctor said. But they let me do it. There's no rule against it. You can do it as often as it takes to beat the point into you, though very few people bother. I remember my roommate wondering why in the world I would chose to take a test _twice_.”

“I see.” Somehow Kirk doubted the exact veracity of that statement. “Did you learn more from your second attempt?”

“Not as such.” He had to bite down on a smirk in the face of Spock's innocently questioning expression. “I...reprogrammed the computer. Made the Klingons all so in awe of me they did whatever I asked. Saved everybody.”

He had rarely seen a look of such shock and offense on his first officer's face. The turbolift arrived. Spock stepped out slowly behind Kirk, still grappling with this betrayal. Finally he said, “I...do not understand.”

“It was an ethical point,” Kirk said as they began to walk to his quarters. “I didn't accept the premise of the test.”

“The no-win scenario?”

“That's right. I didn't think there was such a thing. And I didn't think it was fair to test students on such grounds. To put them up against an entity that cheated, readjusted the parameters on the fly, and told them that that was real life. So, I cheated back.”

Spock considered this at length. Kirk expected him to argue the philosophy, but in the end, all he said was, “I am surprised that you...I think Dr. McCoy would say, 'got away with' that.”

“Oh, there was hell to pay afterward, make no mistake.” He smiled fondly, thinking of the shouting that seemed to have gone on for days, while he sat white-knuckled, terrified out of his mind but determined not to back down. “But the thing was, there wasn't _actually_ a rule against it. No one had ever done a thing like that before. Why would you bother, unless you knew the test was unbeatable? And if you knew the test was unbeatable, you'd already taken it, so why take it again? Of course there's a rule against it _now_ , and I got reamed out for hours, but in the end they had to give it to me.”

“Give...what?” Spock was looking thoroughly lost now.

“Give me the score. Technically speaking, if you opt to take the test multiple times, your final score will be your highest one. Eighteen minutes and twenty-seven seconds. Almost five times the previous record.”

He had to laugh at the look on Spock's face. It felt too good not to: finally a release of the tension that had clenched tight around his back and shoulders for days. It petered out rather abruptly, though, as he remembered why he had thought of this whole story to begin with.

“Captain?” Spock prompted, looking a bit concerned at his sudden change in mood.

“Nothing. I just...Something the proctor said to me after it had all died down. He was torn, I think, between being angry and being impressed, and he said to me...”

_What goes around comes around, Mr. Kirk. You can cheat life every now and again, but sooner or later, it'll catch you up..._

“He was joking, mostly,” Kirk said. “I think. And I laughed him off at the time. But I think...I think he was right. I think it's catching me up right now.”

They had reached his quarters. He entered the door code, but did not step inside.

“In what sense?” Spock asked.

“Well...” He shrugged. “If there was ever a no-win scenario, I'd say this was it, wouldn't you? Either you kill an innocent woman and save the rest of the world, or you let her live and wipe out billions of lives. And this time I didn't have any clever tricks.”

“Jim,” Spock said softly, “You did not _kill_ Edith Keeler.”

“Semantics, Spock. I deliberately let her die. What's the difference?” He leaned into the doorframe, staring into the unlit quarters beyond. “Do you know how many solutions I've found since we came back? Ways to let her live _and_ preserve the timeline?”

Spock said nothing.

“Twenty-one,” Kirk said. “Granted some of them are rather similar, but I think they're distinct enough to merit their own places. And you don't need to tell me that this is all completely pointless, because I know it is. Yet I seem to keep doing it anyway.”

“You are presuming with very little data,” Spock said. “We know so little about how the Guardian functions. Given its...attitude...the way it allowed us to 'fix' a timeline which theoretically should be equally valid to a truly objective observer...it is entirely possible that it had a 'correct' solution in mind, and no amount of clever tricks would have been accepted. An artificial scenario not unlike that of the Kobayashi Maru, save that in this case the parameters were not adjustable by any means.”

“That's only speculation, though,” Kirk pointed out.

“As are your alternative solutions.”

“True.” Kirk sighed and tossed the book into his room. It landed on the bed with a dull _thlap._ “I suppose we'll never know.” The urge to talk was draining out of him as fast as it had arrived.

“Likely not,” Spock said. “But in one regard we can be more certain.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. That your assessment of this situation is highly illogical.”

Kirk sighed. He didn't think he could take Spock attempting to apply _logic_ to the twisted knot of pain and loss and frustration that haunted him still. “Undoubtedly so, but I seem to feel that way about it anyway, and I don't think logic will help this time...”

“That was not what I meant.”

Rapidly losing energy for conversation, Kirk borrowed a mannerism and prompted Spock with a raise of his eyebrows.

“You are categorizing the situation we recently found ourselves in as a 'no-win scenario', similar to the Kobayashi Maru test...at least, the _unaltered_ Kobayashi Maru test.” He spared a moment to express one last drop of impeccably rational distaste for Kirk's chaotic antics. “The two are not comparable, however. In the exam, there is no possible 'positive' outcome. The goal of the mission is to rescue the ship, and that cannot be achieved by any means. No lives can be saved, nothing beneficial can be accomplished. At most, you can perhaps spare the lives of your own crew, or choose to offer the crew of the _Kobayashi Maru_ a swifter death. This was not the case in our situation. You are confusing a situation in which it is impossible to 'win' with one where it is impossible to 'win' _perfectly_.”

“For God's sake, Spock,” Kirk sputtered. “I'm not upset because I think her death lost me _points_ or something! She was a living being-”

“I have no desire to dishonor the admirable life of Edith Keeler,” Spock said. “I too wish that we could have saved her.”

It was that unlikely statement, more than anything, that made Kirk finally realize that Spock understood his pain better than he had thought. Vulcans did not _wish_ for things. It was extremely illogical. If they wanted something to happen, they made it happen; if that was impossible, they did not waste time and energy desiring for it to be so. To confess to such a sentiment represented a profound confession of vulnerability on Spock's part, such that he would never make to any but the most trusted of companions.

For the first time since it had all started-for the first time in as long as he could remember, really-Kirk felt the sting of tears behind his eyes. He closed them tight, willing away the sudden pressure. The enormity of it all suddenly seemed to be crashing down upon him, like a tidal wave looming off the shore that was finally thundering down.

He felt a slim, comforting hand on his shoulder and opened his eyes. “I do not intend to tally up lives and weigh possibilities and conclude that you won, or did not win,” Spock said. “But because of your actions, there was benefit-enormous benefit, in fact, such that, to my knowledge, no other one action has ever accrued. Lives beyond calculating were saved. A long and brutal self-destruction of the human race was averted in favor of a prosperous growth. These are things worth cherishing. And from the little I came to know of Ms. Keeler's character, I believe she, also, would cherish them.”

“Spock...”

“It is very rarely possible to succeed perfectly, with no loss of any kind. You know this, and know it well. All things have their cost. But you are a negotiator without peer. In any given situation, you never accept that there is not a way to lower that cost. I fail to see that this occurrence-or any comment by an Academy proctor-should alter that fact in the least.”

For several moments Kirk could not speak at all. He seemed to have to swallow several times before his voice would work. “He always was a bit doom and gloom, that man...”

“His attitude sounds most illogical,” Spock said. “If he were present I would discuss it with him at length.”

“Mr. Spock, you are most certainly a friend without peer.” He looked back into the darkened room and felt deeply tired, body and soul. “I think I might...rest, now.”

“As you wish, Captain.” Spock stepped back, looking once again every inch the formal first officer. “I shall be available if you need me.”

“You always are, Spock,” Kirk murmured as he finally entered his quarters. “You always are.”

 


	3. Kirk and McCoy

' _Let me help.' A hundred years or so from now, I believe, a famous novelist will write a classic using that theme. He'll recommend those three words even over 'I love you'._

 

He was being chased.

He ran through dark corridors with no end, searching for an exit he would never find, while footsteps thundered behind him, hands reached out for him, strange, distorted voices commanded him to stop-he didn't know why they were after him, didn't know how this safe familiar place had suddenly come to be full of relentless, deadly hunters, only knew with utmost certainty that it had.

His legs didn't seem to work right, his lungs were aching for breath, he was running and running forever and going nowhere, and if they caught him it would be all over, but they didn't catch him. Round and round they went-

He woke gasping.

A familiar scenario. Round five. That stupid dream, and then he would wake, and catch his breath, and find himself in his own perfectly normal room with no one after him, no cause for alarm save the damn adrenal spike that kept occurring when he tried to sleep, so he would swear and mutter and feel a fool except-

Except this time he wasn't catching his breath. He couldn't seem to. He was gasping and gasping and his lungs would not fill and his chest was tight and getting tighter, his heart was racing out of control, it would not slow down, the walls were tilting in on him, he had to get _out_ -

He half-fell out of his bed, dragging the tangled covers with him, and groped for the scanner on his desk, but his hands shook too much to even hold it still, and it clattered to the floor. Was this it? After all the ridiculously treacherous things he had been through, after facing down more impossible odds than any man should be able to get away with, he was going to die of a heart attack in his own room, and Spock would make some stupid comment at his funeral-his vision was tunneling, the walls squeezing in, he had to get out- _no, no I'm not starting that again_ -had to get out...

He managed to stumble toward the wall comm and hit the 'talk' button. “Chris-Christine-” And thank God, thank God, the computer somehow managed accurate voice recognition this time and called up the appropriate contact. A moment later Chapel's confused, sleepy voice emerged from the speaker. _“Doctor?”_

“Chris-I-I-” He was gasping too hard to talk, and anyway couldn't think what to say, but somehow Christine, God bless her, what an amazing nurse, took control of the situation. _“I'll be right there,”_ she said, suddenly all business. _“Stay calm.”_

Stay calm. He would have laughed if he could get the air in.

Chapel made it to his room in what must have been record time, although from his end it felt only a little less than an eon. She was wearing an old flannel bathrobe over a nightgown and her hair had been quickly and roughly pulled back from her face with none of its usual careful arrangement, but she strode into the room as awake and alert as though it were the middle of her shift. “Doctor? Where-ah, there you are.”

He seemed to have found himself sitting on the floor, leaning against the bed with one hand still wrapped tight in his blanket. Chapel turned on the dim bedside light and knelt beside him, scanner already out. He could _not_ stop gasping. “Chris, I'm-I'm dying-”

“You are _not_ ,” she said, as firm and gentle as he had seen her with countless patients before. Oh, but he _was_. His heart was going to explode, or maybe his lungs would give out first, bashing themselves against his ribs in one final, desperate attempt to draw in precious oxygen-

Chapel pressed a hypospray against his neck.

He squinted, trying to see what was in it, not that it would matter, mere curiosity, he was doomed anyway but maybe they could commend her heroic efforts at his funeral, after Spock's comment of course, except his eyes didn't want to focus so it was all a bit moot. Chapel was gently untangling him from the blankets, working his spasming hand loose and holding it in her own as she watched her tricorder.

Slowly...slowly...the gasping eased. He had a hard time stopping; the panic, the sensation that he was desperately without air, took longer to fade than the physical response, but Chapel made him breathe on her count, deliberately, deeply, until he was able to slow down on his own. His heart went from a gallop to a cantor, and finally to something approaching normal. The room began to expand back to its proper size, and the urge to flee diminished. He realized he had been gripping Chapel's hand so tight it must have been painful and hastily loosened his grasp. She said nothing, only wrapped the blanket around his shoulders with one eye on the tricorder.

He glanced down at it too, though he didn't really need to now that he had his wits about him. He could work out what had happened. “Panic attack, huh.”

“Yep.”

He let go of her hand and clutched the blanket around him, feeling ridiculously ashamed. “Chris, I'm sorry. I got you out of bed for a false alarm-”

She looked up at him incredulously. “False alarm?”

“I thought-I dunno, I was having a heart attack, or somethin'...” he mumbled. “I don't know.”

Chapel laid the tricorder down very deliberately and gave him a look which said, quite plainly, that she would be rolling her eyes if she were not a consummate professional, thank you very much. “You called me because of a medical emergency. I fail to see how it matters in the least that you were wrong about the _specifics_ of the emergency.” Her lips quirked with the faintest touch of mischief. “Well...except that I'll remember it the next time you try to leverage your diagnostic success rate to win an argument-”

“Alright, alright.” He was beginning to shake, he realized, and huddled farther under the blanket, although he was not shaking from cold. “Still...you're not even on shift. I should have called Sickbay, I don't know why-”

“Len.” She made him look at her. “Really. It's alright. You were, you know, _panicking_. Kind of rules out thinking straight.”

“Yeah.” He couldn't think of anything else to say, so he said it again. “...Yeah.”

She gripped his shoulder, reassuring. She really was a _very_ good nurse. Best in the Fleet, he'd tell anyone who asked. “What say we take a walk to Sickbay?”

He almost pointed out that there was really not much Sickbay could do about a panic attack now that it was over, but the dread of being alone in this still too-small room suddenly washed over him like a black wave, and he nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, we should...run some tests...” He tried to shift his mind to the medical angle, something he knew, familiar and solid ground. “I don't exactly have a history of panic attacks. Dunno what happened...”

“Well,” Chapel said casually as she helped him to his feet, “It could be the lingering effects of a massive cordrazine overdose. Or it could be excessive amounts of caffeine. Or-”

“Okay, okay.” He had meant to walk on his own, he really had, but his knees wouldn't stop shaking and Chapel had his arm over her shoulder before he could protest. “Wait, I've still got this blanket-”

“Keep the blanket.” She was steering him toward the door with practiced efficiency.

“I don't even have my boots on-”

“Good thing there's not a lot of broken glass or hot coals between here and Sickbay.”

What the crew would think if they saw their CMO being hauled along the corridor in his pajamas-what would _Spock_ think-the mind boggled. But he didn't seem to be winning this argument. She did have a considerable amount of leverage over him at the moment, in the most literal sense.

Fortunately the corridor was currently empty. He had no idea what time it was, exactly, but the lowered lights indicated it was sometime during the ship's 'night', when most of the crew not on duty had retired. Funny, really, how even on a starship where day and night were mere constructs play-acted for the sake of the crew's circadian rhythms, it still managed to somehow feel like the dead of night, silent and still.

With no immediate witnesses, his mind drifted to other matters. “Chris-”

“If you apologize again for causing me to perform my own job,” she said archly. “I am afraid I shall simply not accept it.”

“Well.” He coughed awkwardly. “Actually, I was, uh...I was going to apologize for, y'know. Being a bit of a jackass lately.”

She smiled. “That one I'll accept. But, if I may say something, Doctor...”

“What?”

“Off the record, I mean.”

He was baffled. “Of course.”

“In strictest confidentiality.”

“Yes...”

“Off the clock, in the most informal sense, speaking as a friend-”

“Dammit, Christine!” He remembered just in time to lower his voice, lest any nearby crewmen wake and be witness to this humiliating spectacle. “You're carrying me down the hall in my jimjams, how much more informal do you _want?_ Just spit it out!”

The look she gave him now was _definitely_ mischievous, and yet somehow also totally innocent. “It's when you _aren't_ a bit of a jackass that I start to get worried.”

In response to that there was absolutely nothing to do except splutter uselessly all the way down the hall while Chapel giggled the entire time.

They almost managed to reach Sickbay without encountering anyone, and McCoy was beginning to hope that this would all go unnoticed when they rounded the last corner and saw a lone figure coming towards them. McCoy sighed and squinted blearily at the approaching shape to try and make out who exactly was going to be privy to his humiliation, and if he had any good blackmail material on them.

Oh no. _Oh_ no.

Of course. The absolute _last_ person he wanted to-well, no. That would be Spock. The _second_ -to-last person he wanted to see right now of course had to be the one in four hundred that had decided to take a walk up the Sickbay corridor in the middle of the night. He almost considered making a break for it, but Chapel had a tight hold on him and anyway his knees still didn't seem to be fully cooperating. All he could do was put his head down on Chapel's shoulder and groan.

Despite the discussion with Spock, despite the rest of his book, despite even the rain sounds tape he broke out for particularly bad nights, Jim Kirk couldn't sleep. He had tossed and turned and thought of two more things he could have done, tried to put them aside, thought of three more, and eventually grumbled and got up and yanked on his boots and uniform tunic because clearly this was not going to work. He didn't know why this particular night was so bad; maybe there wasn't a reason. But he didn't have the luxury of letting himself stare at the ceiling in sheer pique for the rest of the night. He was the captain, and he had a responsibility to make sure he could at least _somewhat_ function the next day.

He could have called someone from Sickbay to come bring him something, but he had never been the sort of captain to make his crew wait on him when he was perfectly capable of going to them instead, and anyway perhaps the walk might help. And if Bones happened to be there...well, he probably wasn't, given he should be well off-shift by now, but normal waking hours were hardly a certainty where the doctor was concerned. If he was there he could go ahead and have whatever talk Spock thought he needed to have and that would at least be one thing over with, and if not he could get something to help him sleep-a tranquilizer, warm milk and honey, he didn't care, whatever they had-and hopefully the rest of the night would be a little less miserable.

The two figures coming up the hall as he approached Sickbay would barely have warranted his attention if his eye hadn't been caught by the unfamiliar silhouettes of distinctly non-uniform clothing. Technically of course there was no rule against wearing civilian clothing while off-duty, but it wasn't something you saw very often. Maybe it was a mark of how seriously the crew took their jobs, maybe it was because there was limited storage space for extra clothes anyway, maybe it was just because the current uniforms were surprisingly comfortable, all things considered-whatever the reason, you didn't see someone coming down the hall in a bathrobe every day.

Was that Nurse Chapel?

It _was-_ and whoever was with her was not merely walking alongside but being supported by her. No wonder they were moving so slowly. His captain's instincts flared into life, replacing cranky grogginess with concern and a need for more information. Had there been an accident? If so, why wouldn't one of the staff on duty handle it? He strode past Sickbay and down the hall, telling himself that it was probably nothing, he would have been told if something serious had happened-but then Chapel's passenger raised his head and Kirk realized who it was.

He was down the hall as fast as he could go without breaking into a full-on run.

McCoy didn't seem to be especially injured, at least, although he certainly looked more tousled than Kirk could ever recall seeing him. He was barefoot, wearing flannel pajama pants and a uniform undershirt and clutching a blanket around him, for some reason, with his hair in disarray and a trace of stubble along his jaw; but he was clearly conscious, enough to give Kirk a distinctly unimpressed glare. As he came to a halt in front of them, though, barely even registering Chapel's incongruously cheerful “Evening, Captain”, he realized that McCoy looked-ill? It was difficult to tell in the low corridor lighting, but his friend looked pale and drawn, and his hands seemed to be shaking slightly under the blanket.

“What happened?” he demanded. “Is he alright? Is-”

“He's standing right here and he can hear you just fine,” McCoy muttered.

“Everything's fine, Captain,” Chapel said, ignoring this last comment. “We're just taking a midnight stroll.”

Kirk blinked, thrown by her casualness, and could only trail behind in confusion as she took McCoy into Sickbay. “But-”

Sickbay was quiet this time of night, even more so than usual. It had been a while since they'd had any substantial cause for causalities-besides the one currently grumbling on the nurse's arm-and the only occupied bed belonged to a young engineer sleeping off the regeneration of a badly fractured humerus-something to do with a piece of equipment that hadn't been properly moored and not, as McCoy had first speculated, Scotty finally swearing hard enough to crack human bone. Of the night crew, the only one currently in sight was Dr. M'Benga, who was absorbed in something on a monitor and jerked in surprise at his sudden visitors. Chapel waved him off with her free hand and he slowly sat back down but did not look away from the proceedings, puzzlement and concern written all over his face.

Chapel eased McCoy onto a biobed and watched the readings on the monitor above. Kirk had never been able to make heads or tails of the biobed monitors, but apparently they meant something to the medical crew. Chapel nodded, evidently seeing exactly what she expected to see. “Right on the money, Doctor.”

“Will someone _please_ tell me what's going on?” Kirk said.

Chapel glanced at McCoy, who sighed. “Nothin' to get worked up about, Jim. Just a good old fashioned panic attack.”

Kirk glanced back and forth from Chapel to McCoy. He even glanced at M'Benga for good measure, but the doctor just shrugged, apparently as lost as Kirk was.

“But-I didn't know you _had_ those.” Of course McCoy was entitled to his privacy, but it was a bizarre notion to Kirk that he could be so ignorant of such a factor of his friend's life. Not to mention it seemed like something a captain should know about his CMO.

“Yeah, neither did I. Only happened tonight.” McCoy glanced up at his own readings. “Chris, I don't suppose you've got any ideas what triggered this that _don't_ involve lecturing me about my caffeine consumption?”

“You're going to get lectured about your caffeine consumption tonight one way or another,” Chapel said. “I can tell you that right now. But...” She lowered the more detailed scanner she had been using and considered its readings. “If you don't mind me asking...”

“Shoot. We've gone past all decorum here anyway.”

“Well...you were asleep when it happened, right?”

“Yep.”

“And...I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume you weren't sleeping _well._ ”

“Not as such.” McCoy chewed on his lip, apparently wrestling with something. “I was having a nightmare, if you must know.”

“About the overdose?” Chapel asked, so quietly Kirk almost didn't hear her.

“Yeah...” McCoy narrowed his eyes at her. “How'd you know?”

“An educated guess,” Chapel said, rather dryly, “based on data I gathered earlier today, when I found you sleeping in your office and you yelled ' _Murderers!_ ' and fell out of your chair.”

McCoy winced. “Oh yeah, that did happen.”

“Hold on a minute,” Kirk said. He was starting to get an idea as to what was going on here-what had been going on, perhaps, for three days now-and it was angering and worrying him in roughly equal measures. “You told me you didn't _remember_ any of that.”

McCoy had the grace to look a little abashed. But only a little. “I don't remember the _specifics_ ,” he said, toying with the hem of his blanket. “I just...remember being chased. And being afraid.”

Kirk swallowed hard. He wasn't sure if he was more angry at McCoy for hiding this or at himself for not noticing. “That sounds specific enough to me.”

Chapel cleared her throat very delicately before the argument went any further. “If I may,” she said.

“Please,” McCoy said, deliberately looking away from Kirk.

“There's not a lot of data on significantly high levels of cordrazine dosage, and, frankly, _none_ on a case this severe,” Chapel hedged. “But...we know that even after the initial effects have worn off, patients with doses above a certain level tend to have elevated stress responses afterward. The cordrazine stimulates the brain to over-perform its usual reaction to a threat.”

McCoy nodded impatiently. Kirk suddenly realized that Chapel was dumbing this down for his benefit and felt gratified. She went on: “Typically the effects would have significantly diminished by now, but, well, you _did_ set a record.” McCoy rolled his eyes. “I would hypothesize that even despite your drastically lowered cordrazine levels, the effect has been so prolonged that your brain has become adjusted enough to this heightened response that it needs significantly less stimulation to produce it.” She smiled wryly. “A bit of a computational error, Mr. Spock might say.”

“Yes, but God willing he never will.” McCoy sighed and rubbed at his eyes. “No, you're right, Chris, but I would think-I would _hope_ -that the effects would diminish, not suddenly spike again. That's what worries me. This is the fifth time I've had that damn dream and I wasn't exactly _happy_ the other times but I was able to bring myself down without help.”

“The _fifth_ time?” Kirk said. McCoy ignored him.

“And how long had you been substituting coffee for sleep before Mr. Spock finally got you to stop?” Chapel asked primly. McCoy responded by groaning and rolling over.

Kirk frowned. Had _that_ been what Spock was “speaking to” McCoy about? Why hadn't he just _told_ him so? He would have been over to Sickbay in a heartbeat if Spock had said he was concerned for McCoy's wellbeing.

“It wasn't _that_ much coffee. Honestly, talking about _living on stimulants,_ you're acting like I shot myself up again-”

“I counted eight cups in your office earlier. And the way you make it, that's really more like sixteen.”

Then again, maybe that _was_ what Spock had said, at least in his mind. Vulcans had some distinctly odd ways of expressing pain and physical discomfort, which mostly involved not expressing it at all, to McCoy's own endless annoyance. Perhaps his first officer would have considered it out of line to describe another's suffering too explicitly. Usually Kirk was better at interpreting Spock's mores, but he had been very off his game lately.

“I'm going to surmise that if you had actually let the situation _be_ , instead of pumping yourself full of stimulant, the effects _wouldn't_ have spiked,” Chapel was saying.

“I wasn't sleeping anyway,” McCoy said defensively. “Not enough to stay awake at work.”

“You weren't staying awake at work even with the coffee,” Chapel pointed out. She glanced sideways at Kirk. “You didn't hear that.”

“Not a word,” he assured her.

McCoy squirmed a little. Finally he said, “You wouldn't want to have that dream again either.”

Chapel sighed and sat down on the end of the biobed. “No,” she said gently. “I wouldn't. But I think there were better ways to deal with it than that.” McCoy said nothing. “Which you might have realized, if you been focusing on treating rather than torturing yourself,” she went on a bit more forcefully.

“I was _not-_ ” McCoy protested.

“Len,” Chapel said. “I don't know what happened down there. And I don't _need_ to know,” she added with a glance at Kirk. “But I know you well enough to know that whatever it was, you've been blaming yourself for it.”

McCoy's fingers twisted around the blanket. “I should have kept a better grip on that hypo,” he muttered. “I should've-”

“Oh, no,” Chapel said. “Don't you give me that. I heard enough of your talk with Mr. Spock to know he told you better, and if I have to I'll bring him back in here.”

Kirk sank down onto the next biobed. He should have known, really. He had thought McCoy was angry with him; it had seemed only natural, when he was so angry with himself. But McCoy wasn't one for stewing and sulking in silence. If he had a problem, he made it _very_ obvious. Unless it was a problem with himself, in which case he would hole himself up and never say a damn word to anyone.

Rather like _he_ had been doing.

“I'm afraid that simply won't work, Doctor,” he said, startling both McCoy and Chapel. “You see I've been blaming _my_ self for the past three days, and we can't both be right.” He had to smile a little at the look on McCoy's face, which was probably mirroring the one he himself had been wearing. “Perhaps we could agree to an impasse and instead blame it all on Mr. Spock. That would make about as much sense, I think.”

McCoy stared at him for a moment. Then he began to laugh. “I suppose it would. God, but we're a right couple of idiots, aren't we Jim?”

“Sometimes. But I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell Starfleet that.”

“I won't put it in your file if you won't put it in mine.”

“Deal. But Bones, if you do need to take a break-”

McCoy laughed. “And do _what?_ ”

“It's true, Captain,” M'Benga put in. Kirk jumped a little; he'd forgotten the other man was there. “Any time he gets any kind of time off, he just comes right back in here. We can't keep him out.”

Kirk had to admit he was probably right. For McCoy, in some strange paradoxical sense, being taken away from his work didn't actually seem to be a stress reducer. If anything it made him worse. “Alright. But you understand I can't exactly catch my CMO sleeping on the job.” Chapel was looking at him warily. “Fortunately I am in very good health at the moment and I don't think I will need to visit Sickbay for a while.”

Chapel, to her credit, only let the profound relief show as a mild gleam in her eye. He wondered if she was picking things up from Spock. “I'm very glad to hear you feel so well, sir.”

“Yes, so am I.” He grinned and stretched a little. It was stupid, he knew, and a terrible habit for a starship captain, but pulling things like that always seemed to pick up his mood a little. “So. What does one do for a patient after a panic attack?”

Chapel and M'Benga exchanged glances. “One calms them down as much as possible,” the nurse said.

“A daunting task if ever I knew one, given the patient,” M'Benga said, prompting a spluttered “Hey!” from McCoy. M'Benga ignored him, looking thoughtful. “I do have some Eosteren tea remaining in the break room. It always calms _me_ down.”

Chapel's eyebrows shot up. “You're willing to share your _good_ tea? I don't know...” She glanced slyly at McCoy. “I'm not sure the situation is _that_ serious.”

“Perhaps not in most circumstances,” M'Benga said, with an equally sly smile of his own. “But I _do_ have a performance review coming up.”

McCoy scowled. “Don't worry about it, you're all fired anyway for base insubordination. Didn't I just get the lecture about laying off the caffeine?”

“It's herbal. Decaf.” M'Benga exited toward the break room with a 'be right back' gesture.

“Ew,” McCoy said. Chapel very gently whapped him on the back of the head.

“Insubordination everywhere. Everywhere you look. It's a shambles in here, Jim.” He swung his legs over the side of the bed and cautiously stepped down, with a pleased look when he managed to stand without shaking. Chapel frowned at him. “Doctor-”

“I'm not goin' far, I just don't want to sit on that damn bed anymore. Makes me feel like an invalid. I may _be_ an invalid, but I don't want to feel like one.” He shuffled off after M'Benga. Kirk glanced at Chapel, shrugged, and followed.

Kirk had never had cause to be in the Sickbay break room before. It was a tiny place, little more than a coffee re-supply zone, but it did have a table, and a small counter with a sink, a couple cabinets and a miniature replicator mounted on the wall. M'Benga was evidently one of those people who distrusted the efforts of the replicator in at least some areas, as he was choosing to make tea with a small portable kettle instead.

Chapel sighed and maneuvered neatly around the table, which took up most of the room, over to the cabinets. “I suppose if Jay's willing to share his tea I can make a contribution as well.” She rummaged around in the cabinets for several moments and finally withdrew a box of standard-issue emergency ration bars, which she looked at with considerably more rueful fondness than Kirk had ever seen anyone give ration bars. “I'll have to figure out how to re-hide this now.”

M'Benga and McCoy also seemed inordinately excited at the prospect of ration bars. “I _knew_ it,” M'Benga said. “I _knew_ that box was suspect.”

“Chris, your _stash_ -? I-no, I can't.” The look McCoy was giving the box seemed to indicate otherwise, however. Kirk was thoroughly confused, at least until Chapel opened the box to reveal another box inside it, a small, beautifully carved wooden one with what appeared to be a puzzle lock on it. She pointedly positioned herself so that none of them could see what she was doing and undid the lock.

“Well, I _have_ just been fired,” she said, placing the box in the center of the table. “So I might as well go all out.”

McCoy sat down in one of the rickety chairs, eyeing the box with cautious optimism. Kirk peered over his shoulder and saw that it was full of a variety of chocolate. Judging from the lettering on the wrappers it was a wide-ranging assortment, but it all seemed to be high quality.

“You wouldn't believe the lengths I have to go to to keep this safe, Captain,” Chapel said, catching his eye. “You might think I'm being paranoid, but if I'm not careful it'll be gone like _that_.”

“Listen,” McCoy said. “That happened _once_. And I _said_ I was sorry.”

Kirk raised an eyebrow at his CMO. “The entire box?”

“No, not the _entire_ _box_. Just...a bar or two. But she's never forgiven me.”

“I can't say I blame her.” Kirk angled an eye at the box. “Some of that looks mighty expensive.”

M'Benga laughed over McCoy's harrumphs as he poured off the tea into four cups. “In all fairness, Captain, I must say he had some help.”

“Yes, but it happened in Sickbay,” Chapel pointed out. “Ergo it was his responsibility.”

M'Benga handed them each a cup, still laughing. Kirk sniffed his and took a cautious sip. He had never been a tea drinker, though he would occasionally drink it if Spock offered-more to honor the gesture of friendship in which the offer was made than because he or anyone not raised on a desert planet actually liked Vulcan tea. He was a little wary knowing how much time M'Benga had spent working at the Vulcan Science Academy, but it turned out to be quite good, rich and smoky with a faint tart sweetness.

Chapel's contribution didn't disappoint either. She rationed the squares out strictly, despite McCoy's attempt to claim privileges of rank, and they all ate slowly to make it last. Kirk almost felt as if he were a student again, commiserating over an all-nighter in the dorm kitchen, but he didn't miss the careful eye both Chapel and M'Benga kept on McCoy. If the doctor noticed, he didn't say anything about it, apparently content to focus on his chocolate instead. He was still pale, but his hands had finally stopped shaking.

“Good news,” he said as he finished his chocolate. “I've decided to un-fire you both.”

“Oh, well in that case...” Chapel broke off another square of chocolate and gave it to McCoy, over Kirk and M'Benga's protestations. The nurse folded her arms stoically and didn't budge. “It's my chocolate, I make the rules.”

Kirk swallowed the last of his tea and breathed out into the silence. “You going to be alright, Bones?”

McCoy glanced at him, surprised. “Sure I am. You know me. I carry on.” He eyed the captain. “Are _you_ going to be alright?”

“I...” He traced a pattern over the table, actually thinking about the question. “Yes. I think so.”

McCoy sighed. “It's a hell of a thing to think about, isn't it.”

Kirk had to laugh. And he'd thought Spock had a gift for understatement. “That's one way of putting it.”

“Mm.” McCoy took a slow, careful bite of chocolate. “You were in love with her, weren't you.”

For a moment Kirk was too thrown by the non sequitor to say anything. He glanced over at Chapel and M'Benga, but they both had studious _nobody here but us chickens_ looks on their faces.

And really, what did it matter anyway? “Yeah, I was.”

“I thought so.” McCoy set his mug down and yawned. “You two seemed like you'd be a good match. Both with stars in your eyes.”

Kirk swallowed hard. But the memory lingered faintly less painful than before. “You don't know the half of it. She was living in the twenty-third century already, somehow...predicted half the stuff that was going to happen. I don't know if it was because she was a, uh,” what had Spock called it? “a focal point...or maybe she just had a knack for it. But she didn't belong there.” He shook his head, surprised to finally pinpoint a nameless anger that he had been carrying without realizing. “She shouldn't have...she didn't belong there. She should have been born in our time.”

“Yeah. But at least...” McCoy passed a hand over his eyes. “At least she's here now.”

Kirk blinked at him, confused, and then, slowly, understanding...and something lifted off his chest.

He held out his mug. “To Edith Keeler.”

McCoy clinked his mug against the captain's reverently. So did M'Benga and Chapel, not knowing who they were recognizing, but recognizing her all the same.

For a moment longer Kirk sat there, cherishing a life long gone. Then he set his cup in the middle of the table and briefly gripped McCoy's hand. “...Thanks, Bones.”

He got no response, and looked up to see that McCoy had nodded off.

Chapel and M'Benga exchanged a look. “I reckon we can at least get him onto one of the beds,” M'Benga whispered. The nurse nodded.

McCoy muttered as they guided him back to the biobed, but did not fully wake-a clear sign, if Kirk needed another one, as to how exhausted the doctor must have been. He spoke quietly to Chapel and M'Benga, thanking them though he knew they could not fully have known what for, and made his way back to his own room. The taste of shared delicacies and the solid warmth of a friend's hand lingered with him, and for the first time in three hundred years felt no need to hold onto his ship to assure himself that it was still there.

Somehow he suspected that sleep would be easier to find this time.

 

 

If the young engineer was surprised, upon waking the next morning, to find the CMO curled up under a blanket and snoring softly on a nearby biobed, he kept it to himself. He was new to the _Enterprise_ , after all; perhaps such things happened all the time here.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize this doesn't make a great deal of medical sense, but NEITHER DOES THE EPISODE.


End file.
